Mandela Troubled by `False Image' of Him as `Saint,' He Says in Book

By Nasreen Seria -
Oct 11, 2010

South African anti-apartheid icon
Nelson Mandela is troubled by people who see him as a living
saint, he says in a new book due for worldwide release tomorrow.

“Conversations with Myself” is a collection drawn from
Mandela’s personal archive of letters and journals, providing a
glimpse into the human being behind the public image, his
foundation said in an e-mailed statement today. The book, with a
foreword written by U.S. President Barack Obama, will be launched
in 20 languages across the globe.

“One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false
image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being
regarded as a saint,” Mandela says in an extract of the book
published by the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times yesterday. “I
never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a
saint as a sinner who keeps trying.”

Mandela, who turned 92 on July 18, has grown increasingly
frail, cutting back on his public engagements this year. He
missed an annual memorial lecture delivered in his honor in
July, the first time he failed to appear at the event since it
was launched eight years ago. Mandela made a brief appearance at
the soccer World Cup final in Johannesburg on July 11, waving to
fans as he was driven around the field in a golf cart.

‘Extraordinary Service’

The anti-apartheid campaigner, who spent 27 years in prison
during white rule, served for five years as president following
South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994. Since stepping
down, he has campaigned for children’s rights, global peace and
greater access to treatment for AIDS sufferers.

Obama said the book does an “extraordinary service” by
giving the public a picture of “Mandela the man.” He visited
Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island in 2006.

Standing in the cell, “I tried to imagine Mandela -- the
legend who had changed history -- as Mandela the man who had
sacrificed so much for change,” Obama writes in the forward of
the book.

Mandela, a lawyer, joined the African National Congress in
1944. He was convicted of sabotage on June 12, 1964, sentenced
to life imprisonment and was sent to Robben Island, 7 kilometers
(4 miles) off the coast of Cape Town, where he spent 18 years.

The Nobel peace prize winner opted to forgive his captors
after his release and used his popularity to forge greater
understanding between whites and blacks in South Africa. As a
sign of reconciliation, he supported the then predominantly
white national rugby team, known as the Springboks, in 1995 by
donning a team jersey when they won the World Cup.

Mandela’s relationship with the Springboks was captured by
Clint Eastwood in his 2009 movie, Invictus, which starred Morgan Freeman as the former president.

Trusting

In a transcript of an interview included in “Conversations
with Myself,” Mandela reflects on the view that he is too
willing to see the good in other people.

“That has been said right from my adolescence,” the
transcript, published on the foundation’s website, says. “There
is an element of trust in that. But when you are a public figure
you have to accept the integrity of other people until there is
evidence to the contrary.”

The book, published in South Africa by Macmillan Publishers
Ltd., was compiled by the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Center of
Memory and Dialogue. It includes letters Mandela wrote to his
children, dreams that he jotted on a calendar and extracts of
recorded conversations he had with friends, including Ahmed Kathrada, who was imprisoned with Mandela on Robben Island.

“A lot has been written about Mandela,” Kathrada said in
an interview on the foundation’s website. “But there’s hardly
anything in his own words.”